It’s a New World
E
arly in March, I was at a training meeting for Search & Rescue in my county. One of the first topics discussed was the upcoming training. In early March there were only 2 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 in the county. Still, I felt we should be proactive, and postpone training for March and April, just in case things changed. There was also an Assistant Professor from a local medical college in the meeting that strongly supported my suggestion. Wow! Have things changed. The world seemed to transform in days, with growing concern about some virus in China, to denial that this was anything other than the flu, to escalating into a worldwide pandemic. Planned events started being canceled, including one we were all looking forward to, the IIAR conference in Florida. Plane trips I had planned, were canceled as processing facilities struggled to figure out what to do to limit exposure and possible spread of COVID-19. Also, all training events I was going to be part of were canceled.
As time has gone on, my family has really put texting to work. Recent reports on cellphone usage show a massive increase as people everywhere try to remain “connected”. One brief text from a daughter really hit home, it read “Congratulations you successfully made it to April! Welcome to Level 4 of Jumanji”. In this world that now seems like Jumanji, what are we doing? What can we learn? One of my other daughters has a blog focused on hiking and climbing, and she recently had a quote that I think is very applicable to what everyone is experiencing and how individuals might react. The quote read, “When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.” As my, and most everyone’s normal travel has been greatly cut back or postponed, I along with many others have been looking at ways to continue contacting people, doing work, and learning. The internet has been a live saver, and using the internet has the potential to be a great help, as long as the internet can handle it. As you can imagine the usage of the internet has
LESSON LEARNED?
gone way beyond expectations. Internet providers do expect yearly growth, but we have far exceeded those projections. So far, the system has been able to handle the expanded use, with only a little slowdown, and sometimes that isn’t even noticeable. Hopefully, it stays that way. One useful means to continue learning is to attend webinars. What is a webinar? The word is actually made up of two words, “web” meaning the internet, and “seminar”, shortened to “inar”. Thus, webinar, is a web-based seminar.
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| CONDENSER | May 2020 | A Publication of the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration
www.iiar.org
